1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to operating systems for computers. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for using filesystem operations to initiate device name generation for newly discovered but as of yet unnamed devices.
2. Related Art
One problem that has plagued computer systems that use the Solaris™ operating system is the need to perform a “reconfiguration boot” when new devices are attached to the computer system. In a Solaris™ environment, when a new device is attached to a computer system, the computer system needs to perform the administration procedure known as a “reconfiguration boot” in order to recognize, and generate a name for, a new physical device attached to the computer system.
Currently, if a user attaches a new physical device to the computer system, the user must perform the configuration reboot to use the physical device. This can be problematic, especially for servers that need to be in an operational state as much as possible. Furthermore, if the user adds a new physical device to the computer system while the computer system is in a powered-off state and neglects to perform a reconfiguration boot, the user must often then perform a second boot as a reconfiguration boot in order to generate a name for the newly-attached device.
One method for dealing with the problem of adding devices while the computer system is turned off is to perform a reconfiguration boot every time the computer system is booted. However, this can be problematic because the reconfiguration boot can take a long time to complete in comparison to a normal boot. Moreover, as the number of physical devices attached to the computer system increases, the amount of time required for a reconfiguration boot also increases. For servers that are attached to a very large number of physical devices, such as a large grouping of disk drives in a large storage array, it is not unusual to have reconfiguration boots lasting multiple minutes. This can be troublesome for servers because it is desirable to bring servers back online as quickly as possible.
Hence, what is needed is a method and an apparatus for adding new physical devices to computer systems without the problems listed above.